Pricefield - Time Warriors

Chapter 6: ..."Welcome To 'Innocence Lost'. Trauma Shots Are Free!"

The room was silent for several heartbeats. Kate just sat there and blinked at me in confusion. Victoria, on the other hand snorted and exclaimed, "Well if that's the short version, I sure can't wait to hear the full story!" Then rolled her eyes in disbelief.

Chloe frowned at her. "Trust me, Chase. You don't want to hear the full story."

It was then that Kate spoke up, unnaturally quiet even for her. "I do."

Chloe whipped her head around, ready to say something when I cut her off. "Chloe, stop. They need to hear everything. Whether they believe it or not doesn't matter, they just need to know."

Chloe's mouth snapped shut and she closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing. Trying to reign herself in.

Kate spoke again, her voice barely a whisper. "You know I'll always believe you, Max. No matter how unbelievable it is, I trust you. And if being a time traveller is your explanation for how you know about... that, then it's a lot better than anything I can come up with to explain it."

Victoria growled in frustration. "What am I missing here? What is it that Kate doesn't want to actually say out loud? Why won't you tell me?"

I shared a sad look with Kate, and she gulped. I shook my head at her. "I'll get to it once I start explaining everything, it'll be better that way. Just be patient for once, Vic. Please."

The pleading tone in my voice must've been enough to soften her expression, as she shuffled back to sit against the wall and crossed her arms, waiting for me to begin.

Looking between Kate and Victoria, I spoke plainly. "What you are about to hear will sound impossible, ridiculous and fake. Even I will admit that. However, everything I say is one hundred percent true. Some, no, a lot, of this is going to be hard for me to talk about, so try not to ask too many questions until I'm finished."

They both nodded and leaned forward slightly, while Chloe gratefully took hold of my hand for support. I'll certainly need it.

I took another shaky breath, then began. "Okay, so... I have already lived through this entire week once before. So has Chloe. We both have. Like I said, time travel!" I waved my hands theatrically, trying to lighten the tension in the room.

Victoria was the first one to react. "I know you said it's going to sound impossible, but... yeah, that's impossible, Maxine."

Kate shushed her and motioned for me to continue. "I can explain how, of-course, but you'll need to let me go from the beginning."

Victoria reluctantly nodded.

"Well, everything began, uh... technically today, but in a different timeline. Man, this is going to be hard to explain-" Chloe sniggered at that but I chose to ignore her and pushed forward. "It all started in Mr J-Jefferson's class-.

My accidental stuttering didn't go unnoticed by Victoria, to which she raised an eyebrow but didn't question. Ignoring the shiver creeping up my spine, I kept going. "I must've fallen asleep at my table, where I had this really weird dream. Vision, is probably a better word. I was on the trail leading up the the Lighthouse, in the middle of a storm. When I finally reached the top of the cliff, I saw this crazy massive tornado out to sea, and it was heading straight for the town. It was so windy that a boat was thrown into the Lighthouse and it collapsed on top of me. That's when I woke up in class and almost fell out of my chair."

Victoria pursed her lips. "I remember that. You almost falling out of your chair, I mean."

I traded a worried glance with Chloe upon hearing that, and muttered, "I guess some things stay the same... I just hope I didn't have the same dream this time around."

Kate got my attention and asked, "You don't remember what you dreamed about, uh, this time?"

I shook my head at her. "The mechanics of time travel are strange-" Chloe snorted but remained silent. "We didn't come into this timeline until slightly after class, which I'll get to in a moment. But basically, the Max you saw today in class, isn't me sitting in-front of you now. We're the same person, same body and all that. I just have different memories and experiences which overwrote hers."

Victoria frowned at that. "That sounds-"

I cut her off. "I know how it sounds and I hate it. That's just the easiest way to explain it. Anyway, once class was over, I went to the bathroom down the hall to splash water on my face. Once I'd done that, I spotted a blue butterfly come in through the open window and land on a bucket around the corner at the end of the stalls. So, naturally, I snapped a photo of it. Take a mental note of that, it'll be important later."

They both nodded, and I decided to pull the photo out of my bag so they could see it was real. I carefully placed it on the floor in-front of them. Victoria started reaching to pick it up and I almost bit her head off. "Don't touch it!" She immediately yanked her hand away. "Sorry. Just look at it from where you are. I don't want to risk ripping it, or something. We need it, just in-case..." I trailed off.

Kate hesitated slightly, but asked, "just in-case what, Max?"

Glancing at Chloe for a second, I turned back to Kate. "I'll get to that later. Like I said, you're going to have a lot of questions but it'll take me forever to reach the end. If I try to answer everything, it'll just make it all more confusing than it already is."

Kate shrugged, so I continued. "Well, a few seconds after I took a photo of the butterfly, the bathroom door burst open." I locked eyes with Victoria. "When I took a peek around the corner, I saw Nathan walk in. He walked up to the sinks and started babbling like crazy, talking to himself, saying that he owned the school and could blow it up if he wanted to." Victoria opened her mouth to say something but I raised a hand to silence her, and kept going. "That's when Chloe walked in behind him, though I didn't know it was her at the time since at this point I hadn't seen Chloe in five years, I didn't even recognize her with blue hair. Anyway, they started arguing, over what we'll get into later, but then Nathan pulled out a gun and... and..."

Thankfully Chloe took over for me. "He shot me, Victoria. Right here-" She pointed at the exact place the bullet entered, both of us no doubt had it seared into our minds forever. "I died."

Kate gasped and Victoria's jaw dropped open. I chose that moment to take back control. "At-least she would've done, if I hadn't clumsily hopped around the corner with my hand outstretched. No idea what I thought I could do at the time, but apparently that action somehow activated my powers. Everything kind of slowed to a crawl, before it stopped completely, then went in reverse until I suddenly blacked out and woke back up in class like when I'd had the dream or vision or whatever. Class went exactly the same as it did the first time, which freaked me out so much I knocked my camera to the ground. That's when I thought I'd see if I was going crazy or not, so I stuck out my hand... and everything went backwards again. So after playing around a little by stealing your answers-" I threw a smirk at Victoria before continuing. "I went back to the bathroom and like before Nathan and Chloe started arguing. After rewinding for extra time, I managed to find a way to break the fire alarm in the corner, which distracted Nathan long enough for Chloe to get out of there alive."

Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but I pre-empted her question with an answer. "Before you ask how Chloe is alive when there was no fire alarm today, I'll get to that eventually. Pretty much every question you guys have will answer themselves by the time I reach the end."

She nodded, so I continued. "Now, I'm going to skip a bunch of unimportant details to save time otherwise we'll be sat here until morning. But eventually I made my way to the parking lot, where Nathan turned up and started harassing me, he somehow figured out I was in the bathroom at the time, even-though I never told the Principal about him waving a gun around because spoiler alert, I'd already tried that and he was absolutely useless. After-all, Nathan is a Prescott, and the Principal eats their money just to keep his drunk ass employed." Glancing at Kate, I quickly apologized. "Thankfully, at this point Chloe turned up again too. More like she almost ran me over in her truck. I got in, we escaped, and reconnected on the way to her house. After hanging out in her room for a while, we went to the Lighthouse. That's where she told me why she was arguing with Nathan in the bathroom."

I looked at Chloe, silently asking if it was okay to tell them. She sighed and spoke up herself. "I ran into Nathan one night at a bar, he was wasted and flashing cash. I thought it'd be an easy score, I needed the money. So we started chatting, then went back to his dorm room. He was one step ahead of me and put something in my beer. He drugged me-" Kate gasped. Victoria went pale. "I woke up to him crawling towards me with a camera. I tried to kick him but broke a lamp instead, somehow that was enough for me to rush out the door before he could stop me."

Victoria took a shaky breath, then mumbled to herself. "So that's why his lamp was broken. He told me he'd knocked it over in his sleep-" She blinked once, twice. Then turned to look at Kate, finally putting the pieces together in her head. "Oh god, I didn't want to believe it-" Her breath hitched. "My best friend really did drug you at the party-" All the blood drained from her face. "And I... I just stood there and recorded it. I let it happen-" She glanced down at her shaking hands and muttered, "I'm a monster." before starting to curl in on herself.

Upon hearing that, I quickly glanced around the room. Kate was staring blankly at Victoria, not really seeing her, likely trying to make sense of what actually happened to her. Chloe was too proud and stubborn to do anything to convince Victoria otherwise. So it was down to me to save Victoria from her own insecurity.

Shuffling forward so I was in-front of her, I put on a commanding tone. "Vic, look at me."

Victoria blinked. Then slowly looked up. Since I'd never spoken to her like that before, it got her attention well enough. "Good. Now Vic, I need you to listen to me."

She nodded slightly, so I hesitantly reached to grab one of her hands, gripping tighter as she tried to flinch away. "Vic, trust me. Yes, you fucked up badly. You need to own up to it and accept that. It does not make you a monster." She opened her mouth to protest, so I place a finger on her lips to stop her. "Vic, you are not a monster. That title belongs to someone different, which like everything else, I will get to once you calm down enough for me to continue explaining. Can you do that?"

Reluctantly, she nodded. Then she looked back to Kate, who was now grounded enough to scoot closer as-well. "Kate, I am so fucking sorry. For everything. I-"

Kate sighed, then blinked before looking her in the eyes. "Victoria, I accept your apology. But I don't forgive you. Not yet. You haven't heard the worst of it, if what Max hinted at is true. Besides, I think we're both going to be flipped on our heads by the end of tonight so we should let them finish before either of us break down completely, okay?"

Victoria audibly swallowed and nodded at her. Then she dragged herself back into a comfortable sitting position and turned back to face me.

I took that as my cue to continue the story. "Right after Chloe told me what Nathan had done to her, I kind of half-collapsed on the cliff from another vision, this one came when I was awake, after-all. Though it seemed to be the exact same, with only two differences. The first, I saw a strange ghost-like see-through Doe which lead me up the path to the Lighthouse, dodging fallen trees and logs as I went. Then once I reached the top, it lead me towards the bench, where there was a newspaper caught on the cliff fence. I picked it up and saw the date. It was Friday. This Friday. Meaning, if this vision was real, a massive tornado was going to come five days from now. When the vision ended, I panicked and tried telling Chloe, who just laughed it off as me being silly. Until it randomly started snowing, despite how warm it was. It was clear enough evidence of a storm coming for Chloe to take me seriously. So I explained the day I'd had, much like I am with you two now. Finally, that's the end of the first day."

I sighed and flopped back on the floor. Kate got up pulled a bottle of water out of a cabinet, then handed it to me. I gladly took it and almost inhaled the entire bottle in one go. Kate giggled at that, so I playfully threw the empty bottle at her, which she managed to dodge.

Chloe chose that moment to speak up. "So uh, since you're standing Kate, could you take a peek out of the window to see if it's snowing?"

Kate shrugged, then made her way over to the window, pulling apart the blinds with her fingers so that she could look out. Chloe was holding her breath while I had my fingers crossed. Kate turned around and saw how tense we were. "You can relax, it's not snowing."

Chloe expelled a breath and fist-pumped the air. "Oh thank fuck for that!" She shouted, adding a quiet "Sorry Kate." afterwards.

I simply laid back down, my mind buzzing, trying to comprehend what that actually meant. The storm couldn't be tied to my power usage if this was the case. Was it really just fate demanding Chloe must die? Did we actually trick it by bringing Chloe into this new timeline, even if I was the one who changed history by convincing her not to enter the bathroom, rather than Chloe being the one to consciously make the choice to stay away without my influence which is what we planned on doing. Oh well, that's one less obstacle, right?

Victoria spoke next. "So, wait... Is this storm-tornado-thing real? Did it actually happen?"

I looked up at Chloe and saw her smirk at Victoria. "Well now, that'd be a spoiler, wouldn't it?"

Victoria groaned. "Okay, okay, fine. Keep going, Maxine. Just try to speed it up a little more, please."

I nodded. "For the most part I'll just give you the cliff-notes unless it's important, or something you need to hear in detail-" I cleared my throat and continued. "Now, the next morning I went to take a shower, obviously-" I caught the look on Chloe's face and punched her in the shoulder. "No Chloe, I'm not giving those details you perv. Anyway, Kate was brushing her teeth when I walked in. She asked for her book back, which I said I'd bring by after my shower. Then I, uh... had my shower." I locked eyes with Victoria again, causing her to flinch, wondering what I was about to say. "Halfway through, Vic and Taylor walked in, making made fun of Kate and the video. Kate stormed out practically in tears, saying that you'd be sorry someday. You didn't even care, you just wrote a link to the video on the mirror then started talking crap about me before you both walked out."

Victoria had started sinking into herself again. "Hey Vic, I didn't tell you that to make you feel worse. I told you because I want to give you the chance to learn from the mistakes your alternate self made. You can start by deleting the video if you haven't done it yet."

Victoria looked up. "I already took it down before I decided to come over here. Hearing Kate crying like she was through the wall, it woke something inside me I hadn't felt in a very long time. Remorse."

Kate muttered a quiet, "Thank you, Victoria." to which she nodded in return.

Stifling a yawn, I spoke. "Right, so after my shower I gave Kate her book back, and that's when she told me about the video and the party. She asked me if she should go to the police-" I turned to Kate and smiled at her. "I said yes. And even knowing what I know now, I'll tell you the same thing. If you want to go to the police, do it. I'll always have your back, Kate. Always."

Kate blinked, absorbing what I said. Then she blinded me with her bright smile.

I continued. "Fast forwarding now. After that, I met up with Chloe in the diner where I proved to her I could rewind time. Then we went to the Junkyard where she forced me to collect bottles for a shooting range, to test my powers." I turned to glare at Chloe. "For the record, that was absolute torture. Do not make me do that again." Chloe snorted. "Also, confession time here. I may have made you shoot yourself on purpose as payback for putting me on bottle collection duty."

Kate gasped in shock, but Chloe just waved her hand and shrugged. "I figured as much, Max. You rewound so... no harm no foul, right? Besides, you more than made up for it when you shot at Frank to protect me."

Victoria spoke up at that. "Wait, Maxine shot at Frank? Frank Bowers? Seriously?"

I shrugged at her. "Sort of. Right after we'd finished shooting bottles, he turned up demanding the three thousand dollars that Chloe owed him. She may have lost her temper when she saw Frank wearing one of Rachel's bracelets- "I felt Chloe stiffen beside me at that, so I sneakily rested my hand on her back. "Which made him pull out his knife and threaten her. I wasn't going to let Chloe get stabbed so I pulled out the gun and... bang. It was empty."

Chloe chuckled. "At-least it scared Frank enough for him to leave with his tail between his legs."

I nodded. "After that, we sat on the train tracks nearby, then I got up to take a photo and was randomly hit by another vision. When I came to, Chloe was screaming at me to help her. The idiot got her foot stuck in the tracks and there was a train coming. I had very little time to get her free. At-least I could rewind, right?"

I could feel my hands starting to shake and clenched them in an attempt to stop it. "I'll spare you the gory details, but full disclosure, let's just say that is one of many PTSD moments I have to deal with now."

Kate gasped.

Victoria swore.

I smiled sadly. "Oh, it gets worse. Once I'd freed her, she dropped me off at Blackwell for class. That's when I saw Kate talking to Jefferson. She was asking for his help with, well, everything. Yet he didn't want to hear it. He blew her off and even tried to blame everything on her before she stormed off down the hall in tears."

Victoria was frowning, at what I wasn't sure exactly. Either the fact that he didn't care, or that I'd slandered her hero. Hopefully it was the former. Kate had slumped against the base of her couch, if I had to guess, she probably worked out what was coming next.

I sighed. "After an awkward conversation with Jefferson, I went into class. A few minutes into the lesson, Zachary burst into the room shouting about something going on at the girl's dorm. So naturally, everyone got up and walked out, completely ignoring Jefferson. It was pouring with rain, and by the time I reached the dorms most of the school was stood outside-" I choked up then, and glanced over at Kate. "They were looking up at... at..."

I shuddered and took a shaky breath but was interrupted by Kate. "It's okay, Max. They were... looking up at me, weren't they?"

All I could do was give a single hesitant nod.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Victoria's jaw dropped in horror. Then she hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking back and forth as tears, real tears, began sliding down her cheeks.

Kate grabbed my hand, so I took another couple of deep breaths, then spoke. "The second I rounded the corner and saw you up there... y-you jumped. Like, you actually did it. I saw it happen-" That was too much for Victoria. She suddenly scrambled to her feet and tripped a few times stumbling over to the door, where she stood with her back flat against it. As if she desperately wanted to leave but also wanted to force herself to hear every single word to punish herself.

Chloe, seeing Kate comforting me already, took one look at the sheer devastation on Victoria's face and decided she had to do something. She stood and cautiously made her way towards her. She moved to put a hand on Victoria's arm but she flinched in response.

Chloe sighed in frustration. "Fuck, Chase. I may not like you but the last thing I'd do right now is hit you. I'm not that much of a jerk. Look, you've clearly suffered enough. The fact you haven't even bothered to hide your tears shows that much."

Victoria robotically wiped a finger across her cheek, glanced at it and mumbled, "Oh." Then she blinked and the tears dripped even faster as she collapsed against the door, sliding down into a crumpled mess at the bottom.

Figuring she'd just make things worse, she caught Kate's eye and motioned for her to trade places. So they did. Chloe sat down next to me and held my hand while Kate slid down her door and after exchanging a few words, dragged Victoria right into her lap and let her sob onto her shoulder.

Once her sobbing had quietened considerably, Victoria waved her hand for me to keep talking.

So reluctantly, I did. "You should know, that although Kate did jump off the roof, I almost killed myself with how determined I was to undo it. I'm exaggerating but that's certainly how it felt at the time." Kate shot me a grateful smile. "I pushed my rewind to it's breaking point, literally. Somehow I managed to completely stop time. Everything around me was frozen. The people, bird stuck mid-flight. There was no sound. It was quite eerie, actually. I was able to move around though, except it felt like I was wading through quicksand, or mud, something thick. Not sure how to explain it, really. Eventually I dragged myself up to the roof and right when I threw open the roof access door... My powers completely died. My nose was bleeding, heavily. It does that if I push myself too hard. So I couldn't rewind or anything. I had to somehow stop Kate from jumping and I only had one chance to get it right."

Both Kate and Victoria were staring at me, waiting for the outcome. I looked up and grinned at them. "I did it."

Victoria let out a long breath she was holding, while Kate came over to hug me. Mid-hug, I decided to reiterate my earlier promise. "I told you I will always have your back, Kate. Never, ever, forget that."

She hugged me tighter and whispered, "From the bottom of my heart, bless you, and thank you, Max. I will never forget."

Then she did something I didn't expect. She kissed me on the cheek. I blinked, and she was gone. Already sat back against the door with Victoria.

I saw Chloe raise an eyebrow, to which I simply shrugged. Then she smirked and leaned in to kiss me on the other cheek. I turned my head to see Victoria watching with a curious expression and felt myself blushing. Victoria just rolled her eyes at me and said, "No, Maxine, you're not getting one from me."

Groaning, I covered my face to hide the increasing intensity of my blush.

When my face had returned to it's natural colour, I decided to pretend nothing had happened by finishing off my explanation of the second day. "So uh, after I you know, talked Kate down, she was taken off to hospital and I was dragged into the Principal's office to tell them what had happened. Them being the Principal, David – Mr Madsen I mean – and Jefferson. Nathan was there too. As you can imagine, I had a choice to make. I could blame what happened to Kate on Nathan, rightfully so because he drugged her, but since the Principal is such a Prescott fan I was suspended instead due to the fact that I didn't tell him about Nathan's gun at the start, so it was easier for him to assume I was lying-"

Chloe growled angrily at that but let me continue.

"Even-though I was the only reason you stepped down from that fucking roof, the Principal ignored what I had to say. He's so full of shit, it's unbelievable. So after rewinding, I tried blaming it on Mr Madsen since he kept on harassing you, following you and taking photos of you. Plus it's his fault the roof access door was unlocked, so seeing him get chewed out by the Principal for that was hilarious. Sadly, blaming him didn't work either because I had no evidence of him harassing you. That's what I got for stepping in to defend you rather than stand there and take a photo while he bullied you. Plus he made a comment about me smoking weed, which was false. It was Chloe's, not mine, I just took the blame for her like a best friend does so that David would leave her alone. The Principal didn't like that and chose to suspend me instead, so I rewound again and had no choice but to point the finger at Jefferson. He was the one to make you cry and I assume that was the final straw pushing you up to the roof. The Principal seemed to accept that, and Jefferson got removed from hosting the Everyday Heroes contest-"

Chloe made an approving snort then and I quietly hummed in agreement.

"Of-course later on you can imagine Victoria wasn't too happy about that. She started a website and petition to get him reinstated, not that it worked-"

Chloe chuckled at that.

"Anyway, once the office interrogation was done with, I was sat on the campus quad with Warren, telling him all about how I saved Kate, when there was suddenly an eclipse. Unscheduled, according to Warren. That's another sign of the storm coming, so be on the look out for an eclipse tomorrow. There, that's Tuesday done."

Victoria sighed and stretched her legs. "I really hope the rest of this goes quicker or I'll fall asleep right here."

I smirked. "Well I did warn you it'd take a while to get through. But yes, I think from here on out I shouldn't need to go into too much detail A lot of it's not important to this timeline and will be skipped over. I'd ask if you want a break but I get the feeling you just want to get through it, huh?"

She huffed then nodded at me, so I dove right back in. "Okay, so basically Chloe woke me up in the middle of the night to meet her on campus so that we could look for evidence about, well... Anything and everything. Things weren't adding up and it was all getting a little suspicious. So we broke into Blackwell since Chloe stole Mr Madsen's keys, though we had to build a, uh... pipe bomb, to blow open the door to the Principal's office. Once inside we looked for clues connecting to Kate, Nathan, David – Mr Madsen sorry – and even Rachel. We came across Nathan's buried Blackwell disciplinary record and discovered some sort of crazy drawing done by Nathan that was actually one phrase written over and over." I took a deep breath and squeezed Chloe's hand, then continued. "It said 'Rachel in the Dark Room'."

Victoria sat up at that. "Wait. A Dark Room? For photography?"

Reluctantly, I nodded. "Y-Yes-" Wincing at the stutter, I pushed forward. "Though we didn't know what it meant at the time. In hindsight, it was obvious. We stole a suspiciously marked envelope of five thousand dollars supposedly for the 'Handicapped Fund' that never actually got put towards the upgrade, so we Chloe could use it to pay Frank off. After that, we broke into the pool for a midnight swim, at Chloe's insistence. Then we slept at her house to avoid security. In the morning, I went downstairs to have breakfast and Joyce, Chloe's Mom, let me look through some old photos. She gave me one to keep, which was taken the same day William, Chloe's Dad died..." I coughed and cleared my throat before carrying on. "I wandered outside and there was a whole bunch of dead birds lying around, for the record that's the third sign of the storm coming. Then I went back inside, Chloe came downstairs and distracted her Mom so I could search through Mr Madsen's garage files, where I found a whole bunch of surveillance crap. Photos, vehicle tracking coordinates, things like that. Mr Madsen then came home, so we confronted him about taking photos of students which ultimately made Joyce kick him out of the house, to Chloe's delight. After that, we headed to the Two Whales diner to break into Frank's RV to search for more evidence he might've had, as-well as for a reason why he had one of Rachel's bracelets." I placed my hand on Chloe's back to comfort her, then kept going. "After a lot of talking to people in the diner and a lot of rewinding, I managed to snag Frank's keys. Inside his RV we found his client list and log book of all his deals. We also found, um... evidence of Frank and Rachel being more than friends. Let's just say Chloe exploded at revelation and she lashed out at me since I was the only one left around. She dropped me off at Blackwell without a word, so I went back to my dorm room, sat down on my bed and started looking at the photo Joyce had given me earlier. This is where it gets weird. Somehow I was able to focus on the photo and got... sucked into it, for lack of a better description. I suddenly found myself back in time, in my 8 year old body, the day William was supposed to die. You can imagine what I thought would be a good idea."

Kate gasped in surprise.

Victoria groaned. "You tried to stop it, didn't you."

I sighed. "Yeah. Big mistake. Stopping William's death threw me forward in time to the present, just everything was different now. I was apparently popular enough to be a part of the Vortex Club-" I smirked at the expression on Victoria's face and continued. "We seemed to be close friends, or something. I freaked out and left to find Chloe. On the bus ride over to her house, I saw a group of whales dead on the beach, another sign of the storm coming... even in a changed timeline, which was strange. Once I'd reached Chloe's house, William answered the door. He was alive. Of-course, the consequence of saving his life was... Chloe got into a car accident instead and was paralysed from the neck down, slowly dying. I'm going to skip over everything that happened in this new reality because it was a very painful experience, knowing I'd caused Chloe to be like that." I shuddered at the memory. "Eventually I came across the same photo from William's final day and travelled back through it... I was forced to let him walk out the door and die, just to get back to a healthy Chloe. I even burned the photo before I was pulled forward, just to make sure I wasn't tempted to do that again. So, once the timeline had gone back to normal and I took back control of my proper body, I found myself in Chloe's room. Apparently we were in full-on detective mode to figure out what happened to Rachel. I broke into one of Mr Madsen's garage lockers for more evidence, then we left to quickly visit Kate in the hospital where we discussed our plan to break into Nathan's room to look for clues. Surprisingly you were on board with it and offered up his room number once we got to the boys dorm. Chloe stayed on lookout while I broke in and found a photo of Chloe, drugged, in one of his drawers. That wasn't fun. Other than that, I found a hidden plastic pouch stuck to the back of his couch which contained a phone and a slip of paper with a lot of numbers on it. I quickly exited but Nathan walked into the dorm right as we were making our getaway. He threatened us, but luckily Warren showed up and... well, he kicked the crap out of Nathan as payback for attacking me in the parking lot. Then we left to go pay Frank off and convince him to hand over the code names to his client list so we could decipher the deals in his log book. After an insane amount of rewinding screw ups on both our part, he gave it up. We went back to Chloe's room and put every piece of evidence we'd collected up on a board. It took forever to work it all out, but eventually we tracked Nathan's truck to an old abandoned Prescott barn the day of a Vortex Club party where Rachel first went missing. So we went out there. The barn was creepy but nothing compared to what was hidden underneath by a secret trapdoor. After some messing around, we got the padlock off and opened it, revealing a set of stairs leading to a reinforced steel bunker door. I used one of the numbers from the piece of paper Nathan had hidden on the keypad and managed to get the door open." I was trying so hard not to start shaking. "Behind it was the D-Dark R-Room." I mentally cursed my stuttering, which Victoria certainly noticed and furrowed her brow at. "The storm bunker had been repurposed into an elaborate photography studio setup." My breath caught in my throat as I started recalling memories of what the room looked like. "After a little snooping around, I found a cabinet full of red binders, all with different names on them." I looked up and saw Kate gulp. Victoria was biting her nails in worry.

I sighed and took a deep breath. "Kate, your name was on one of them. Inside were posed photos of you, though you appeared unaware of what was happening. Probably from the drugs."

Kate froze, her eyes wide in shock. I wanted to hug her but needed to push ahead before I got caught up in the memories, so I turned to look at Victoria next. "There was one with your name on too, however it was still empty."

The colour drained from her face, a look of horror took over her expression. I glanced at Chloe and squeezed her hand, then kept going. "There was a binder for Rachel, too. Hers were full of photos, except she was wide awake and very pissed. The last photo in the binder was, um... Nathan posing with Rachel in the Junkyard, and putting her into the ground. Chloe knew the spot so we ran out of the bunker and sped off to the Junkyard. We found the spot and started digging, until... until..."

I couldn't continue, but Chloe finished for me, despite being in tears already. She manage to croak out, "We dug until we found what was left of her. She's dead. Buried in the Junkyard, right under my fucking nose the entire time. She was dumped in the only place Rachel called home. The Junkyard was our hangout... to think that she died there..." Then she collapsed on herself and broke down crying. Chloe obviously hadn't been able to fully process her grief until now. She was too hell-bent on revenge before, whereas now she finally has the time to let it fully sink in.

I looked around the room. All of us were in varying states of crying. I cleared my throat and muttered, "I think a group hug is needed. Come here, guys." Then I opened my arms wide.

Chloe was the first to oblige since she was still sat right next to me. Kate shuffled over next and finally after some hesitation, Victoria made her way over. We all hugged, tight, and cried into one another's shoulders. We needed the combined support of each other right now, so that we could process our shared grief and trauma together.

A few minute later, Victoria suddenly spoke up. "I'm going to fucking kill Nathan."

I leaned back to look her in the eyes. "You might want to wait until I get to the end of everything."

Kate sighed into my shoulder. "Then don't stop now, Max. Just... nobody let go, please."

I hummed affirmatively, and picked up where I left off. "After we... found Rachel, Chloe was desperate to kill Nathan too. Not that you can blame her. We were planning on confronting him at the 'End Of The World' party. On our way in, I saw the final indication of the storm's arrival – there were two moons in the sky, one of them overlapping the other, ghostly, see-through and flickering randomly. It was like timelines were bleeding together or something, very weird. Chloe was too focused on revenge to notice it, but I sure did. Anyway, we went inside and asked a bunch of people if they'd seen Nathan around. Nobody had. Eventually I found my way to you, Vic. We assumed Nathan was planning on drugging you at the party since your binder was still empty. So I warned you to stay away from Nathan and not to drink anything. Surprisingly you actually listened to me. Since we couldn't find Nathan anywhere, we left the party, though not before watching Jefferson call you out as the winner of the Everyday Heroes contest. Then as we were walking back to Chloe's truck, she got a text... from Nathan. He said there'd be nothing left of Rachel when he was done. So naturally, we double-timed it back to the Junkyard to stop him." I sighed. "Obviously it was a trap, and we walked right into it like idiots." I felt Victoria tense up at that. "We reached the spot where Rachel was buried, except she was still there-" I started shaking, and no doubt they could all feel it. "All of a sudden I got jabbed in the neck with a syringe. The effect it had on me was near-instant and stopped my powers from working properly. I tried to call out to Chloe but by the time she turned around and reached for her gun... She got shot. In the head. I watched as she fell right on top of where Rachel was buried, already dead. The last thing I saw before I passed out... wasn't Nathan."

I pulled away and closed my eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. The unexpected rage burning in my eyes made Kate and Victoria both recoil in surprise, though Chloe appeared just as furious as I was. So I poured as much hatred and venom into my next words as humanly possible. "The person standing over me was... Mark Fucking Jefferson.

Both Kate and Victoria gasped in shock. Their jaws practically hitting the floor.

I stared down at my shaking hands and balled them into fists. "I woke up in the Dark Room strapped to a fucking chair."

I watched as they stared at me in horror, too stunned to speak. I turned my head to look at Victoria, who audibly swallowed. "I was trapped in the Dark Room... and so were you, Vic."

Victoria turned deathly pale and whispered, "No..."

I shook my head, sadly. "It's my fault. If we weren't tunnel visioning so hard on Nathan, we might've suspected Jefferson. Instead, me warning you about Nathan just shoved you right into Jefferson's hands. I'm so sorry."

I sighed as a single tear rolled down her cheek. "It took me so long to get out of that hell hole. Multiple photo jumps and rewinds, manipulating different timelines to change things in my favour. Throughout it all, he told me that Nathan had accidentally overdosed Rachel trying to mimic his work, though I'm not entirely sure he was telling the truth. He also said that he had to kill Nathan after he'd slipped up so badly with us and apparently he even killed you, Vic." She blanched at that. "He was tying up loose ends and with Chloe already dead I was the last one left. Eventually, I lasted long enough for David – Mr Madsen – to show up after I'd gone back and sent him an anonymous tip about the location of the Dark Room. Several rewinds later and he managed to take down Jefferson without getting shot and freed me. Of-course I couldn't stay in that timeline with Chloe dead so I decided to track down Warren and use a photo he'd taken right before the party so that I could warn Chloe in time. However, getting to Warren was the hard part since the storm I've been mentioning had finally landed, complete with the tornado out at sea. So I stole Jefferson's car to reach the diner where Warren was hiding, and that's when I noticed a voicemail from Nathan. He apologized for everything and said that Jefferson was going to kill him, and that he wanted to hurt me next. I just received it too late..." Victoria sniffled. "Anyway, after being forced to continue on foot, I finally reached the diner and used the photo to go back in time. I warned Chloe and told her to go straight to David and not to leave the house. When I came back to the present, we were standing on the beach, staring down the tornado. Apparently while I was on auto-pilot, that's what I call it when I'm travelling between timelines by the way, I'd told Chloe that we would be safe at the Lighthouse. So that's where we went since it was out of the way of the tornado. However I collapsed before we got there and had a very creepy nightmare. By the time I came to, Chloe had carried me up to the top of the Lighthouse. After realizing that the tornado was probably going to completely wipe out the town, Chloe tried to shove that butterfly photo I told you to remember into my hands. She asked me to go back and let her die so that everyone else could live. Or I could just let the tornado kill everyone while Chloe lives. There's no way I could make a choice like that, so we gambled with a third option instead. I used the butterfly photo to jump back to the bathroom, except I tried to bring Chloe with me so that we could get a second try at the week. It actually worked, for the most part and here we are. So, if there is no storm or tornado coming, we just have to deal with Jefferson and I guess Nathan too... then we've beaten fate."

Finally finished and exhausted, I melted into the floor. Everyone was silent for quite some time, digesting all the info I'd just given them. Suddenly, Kate muttered under her breath just loud enough for the rest of us to hear, "Fuck."

A heartbeat of surprised silence later, we started giggling and couldn't stop. I guess there was only one way for Kate to appropriately express how she's feeling, and that was to swear.

Once we'd stopped laughing, I sat up. "Okay guys, listen up. The reason I decided to tell you both everything is because you deserved to know. That, and you're just as involved in this bullshit as me and Chloe are so I needed you to be aware of the truth even if you don't want to help us-"

Victoria interjected. "Fuck that, Max. Of-course we're helping. You can't dump all of that on us and expect us to pretend nothing is wrong."

Kate hummed in agreement.

I nodded in response. "I was hoping you'd say that. Jefferson may have hurt us before but this time he won't see us coming, especially not when Chloe can come with me when I use my powers. All four of us though? We'll be unstoppable."

Victoria smirked. "Oh he's so fucked."

Kate snorted at that.

I yawned loudly. "Ugh. Well I think we should all head to bed now, even if we probably won't get much sleep. Lets meet up in the morning and we can all head to the Two Whales for breakfast, my treat. We can plan our first move there... Just in time for photography class. That's going to suck but together we should be able to survive it."

Kate and Victoria nodded. We all stood up and walked to Kate's door. She stayed behind, obviously, while the rest of us headed out into the hallway. Victoria walked over to her door and turned to wave goodnight before entering.

I turned to Chloe. "Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?"

Chloe sighed. "I'd love to and I know you'll need the company... but I really should get home and see if step-douche has listened to the ultimatum I gave him earlier. Otherwise I might have to raise some hell."

I smiled sadly. "Okay, Chloe. See you tomorrow then. I'll text you in the morning to let you know when to pick me up for breakfast."

Chloe nodded, glanced around at the empty hallway and leaned in to give me a quick kiss before turning around and walking towards the exit.

I was smiling from ear to ear as I made my way back to my own room. A good end to an exhausting day.